David Prejean: The myth of the wage gap

"You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work." - Barack Obama, Jan. 2014, State of the Union Address.

Obama raised this issue again recently. And he's not the only one to bring up the 77-cent statistic in the context of equal pay for equal work. The media, politicians and activists repeat it over and over in articles and speeches about equal pay. The fact is that this stat has very little, if anything, to do with equal pay for equal work.

Anyone who has looked into the 77-cent statistic knows this disparity is not the result of workplace discrimination against women, but is a result of choices women are making: choosing different jobs than men, not working as many hours, taking time off to have and raise kids, etc. Choices we surely don't want to take away. In fact, all things being equal, there is very little, if any, so-called "wage gap".

And yet the Obama administration, politicians, activists and the media continue to mislead the public with this bogus statistic. Are they taking advantage of the fact that most people think that others wouldn't blatantly lie like this to get the edge in the debate? Or do they push the inconvenient fact that the stat is untrue out of their mind in a deft piece of motivated reasoning?

This is just one example of manipulated data to advance a cause. It happens to be an example of an issue championed by liberals, but both sides do it. I wouldn't take at face value any statistic put out by the Jindal administration, for example.

It is part of human nature to want to help, to make things better, to be an activist for a cause even if it's only around the water cooler. The problem is that those who have their "activist dial" turned to 10 are the ones who spend their lives pushing a cause and pulling their followers behind them. If that means a factual fudge here or a bit of confirmation bias there, well, it's just the way the game is played, right?

The obvious point here is that we can't trust what we read in the paper or what comes out of the mouths of politicians or those who are pushing an agenda - and yet we continually do. Why? Could it be that we are less interested in the truth than we are about find a cause to get behind?

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David Prejean: The myth of the wage gap

'You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for